Over $60 Million In Bitcoins Potentially Stolen after NiceHash Cryptocurrency Site Hack
The Bitcoin craze is heating up with record highs of the popularized cryptocurrency in the recent weeks reaching a price of over $17,000 for a single Bitcoin. Garnering much attention from curious minds and new investors, hackers have allegedly taken to the cryptocurrency waves to make away with $60 million worth of Bitcoin after a cyber attack on the cryptocurrency mining platform NiceHash.
NiceHash is among many cryptocurrency mining platforms that Bitcoin miners utilize to find new Bitcoins through the use of specialized computers that perform complex mathematical equations to add cryptocurrency transactions to blockchains. The complex actions usually require a significant amount of electricity to run the Bitcoin mining machines that ultimately add the Bitcoin transactions to the blockchains or decentralized public ledgers.
Apart from the Bitcoin phenomenon being a complex structure that isn't regulated by outsiders, hackers have their eyes focused on recent record-breaking gains and have allegedly made away with Bitcoins that amount to over $60 million. During and after the attack on NiceHash, the cryptocurrency mining platform released a few Tweets to update its users apologizing for the inconvenience caused by a "service issue" at the time. Afterwards, NiceHash explained that they would close down its site for a day as they investigate the nature of an "incident."
While there is no certainty to the exact amount that hackers were able to score in the attack on NiceHash, head of marketing at the firm, Andrej P. Škraba, confirmed to the news agency Reuters that around 4,700 Bitcoins had been lost. At the current exchange rate of Bitcoins that would amount to over $70 million usd.
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency continues to reach new record highs and has been an increasing target for thieves and crafty hackers. In knowing how many newcomers are flocking to buy up Bitcoins, invest in Bitcoin miners, and join cryptocurrency mining platforms, we are certain that hackers are gearing up to pounce on the vulnerable.
Believe it or not but cryptocurrency theft has taken place in the past many times amounting to millions of dollars being stolen. Just last month, a massive number of the cryptocurrency Ethereum were accidentally frozen on the cryptocurrency wallet provider Parity. The result of the currency freeze was where a user deleted the code of a specific wallet thus freezing all Ether tokens contained within the wallet. In other words, the millions of dollars within the frozen wallet of Ethereum cryptocurrency was lost for good without any recovery available.
The growing popularity of Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies will only make matters worse as hackers continue to literally cash in on the vulnerabilities within various cryptocurrency mining platforms, such as in the NiceHash incident. Those who are looking to get into the cryptocurrency market are advised to utilize caution and perform extensive research before buying in or mining the currency as there are apparent dangerous lurking that could end up in the loss of literally millions.